“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is about Charlie, a young boy who lives with his parents and grandparents. In a household with very little income, Charlie gets barely any food, and only gets to have one chocolate bar from the genius chocolatier Willy Wonka once a year on his birthday. When Willy Wonka holds a raffle to allow five lucky children to take a tour of his factory with the promise of the winners receiving a lifetime’s worth of chocolate, Charlie can’t believe it when he is one of the lucky five. Over the course of the tour, the children one by one are whisked away in some fantastical manner in the dangerous conditions of the factory. By the end, Charlie is the only one left, and so he inherits the factory, allowing him and his family to live in comfort for the rest of their lives.
I think this book could be used as a theme or backdrop of sorts for a STEM activity with older kids in Mouse Trap, Rube Goldberg-style machines. While reading, I imagined using it to do a hands-on engineering and construction-based project involving the many wacky mechanisms that are in this book.
Author’s Website: Home | Roald Dahl
